There With You by Samantha Young

27

Regan

Present day

“Liam and Desi wanted to get the police … and I should have.” I couldn’t meet Thane’s eyes. “I should have been brave and stayed and pressed charges, but all I could think about was running. Getting as far away from Austin as possible. If I could get away, then it never happened. So that’s what I did.”

Thane’s silence made my heart throb with renewed fear.

Now he knew.

I was a coward.

Finally, I looked up into his eyes. He was furious.

My stomach dropped. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You,” he bit out hoarsely, “have nothing to be sorry for. I just … I wish you’d told me. Then what happened downstairs …”

“No.” I reached for his face, scrambling into his lap to straddle him. “No, Thane, no. What we have,” I whispered against his mouth, fresh tears falling, “it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t want this to taint it.”

He gripped my hips, squeezing. “Why didn’t you tell me, then? Why did you lie to me and Robyn about what happened in that hotel room?”

Shame was this sickening ball in my gut. “Because … I’m not strong like you. Or Robbie. I’m not brave. And I thought if I just pretended it didn’t happen, then he wouldn’t have any power over me. I guess I got so good at pretending … that I really buried it. I buried it like it was just a nightmare. Until now. It flooded up and out of that deep, dark pit I’d put it in.”

“Mo leannan.” Thane cupped my face in his hands. “Our brains are strange and complicated. But when we bury things that shouldn’t be buried, our subconscious always pushes it back into the daylight. And now that it is”—his expression was tender but wary—“you can’t pretend anymore. We have to deal with it. And you must tell Robyn. You have to press charges.”

I tried to pull away, but he slid his hand around my nape to gently but firmly stop me.

“Please, mo leannan. Or I’m going to kill the motherfucker.”

It wasn’t a threat said in an angry but teasing manner.

He sounded extremely serious.

“You’re going to fly to the US to kill him?” I tried to ease the tension between us.

Thane didn’t think any of it was funny. “He tried to rape you. He stalked you. And he made you feel like a coward, which you’re not.”

I looked away.

He took hold of my chin to turn me back to him. “You are strong. You are brave. And I won’t let him make you feel like his victim.” He nodded. “Yes?”

Considering this, considering the rage I felt in that room, and then how I’d buried what he’d done so deeply that I’d served coffee to that piece of shit for weeks after, something hard and determined slid through me. “You’re right.”

Pressing a sweet, grateful kiss to his mouth, I sighed into him. “Thank you.”

“I did nothing,” he said gruffly.

“You did. You were you.” I kissed him a little deeper, and his hands flexed on my hips.

“We shouldn’t. You should rest.”

“I don’t want to rest.” I kissed his cheek through his beard, peppering soft kisses down his strong throat. “I want to make love to you. All you have to do is sit there and take it.”

Searching my gaze for truth, Thane hesitated.

He didn’t trust me. Didn’t trust me with my own emotions.

How could I blame him?

My inner question made me freeze over him.

Just because I’d buried a trauma didn’t mean I didn’t know myself.

I knew myself.

I glared at him. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I didn’t.” He frowned. “I didn’t say a word.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“It’s not that. I just think it’s too soon right now.”

“For who?” I slipped off him and slid from the bed. “Me? Or you?”

“Regan.” I heard him scramble to get off the bed, but I was already out of the room.

Just as we were about to pass his room, he caught up and pulled me to a stop. “Regan, don’t take this out on me. Please.”

I glowered at him. “You know what you don’t do when the woman you’re sleeping with tells you she was almost raped? You don’t sexually reject her afterward. It tends to make her feel like used goods.”

Thane jerked like I’d punched him. “I never meant it like that.”

Remorse flooded me. “I know. I’m just …”

“I know.” He hauled me into his arms, hugging me tight. “Let’s take a breath. We’ll go downstairs and have some dinner. Yeah?”

I nodded, though I still felt a little rejected.

Rational or not.

Thane took my hand and led me downstairs.

We avoided the kitchen table and ate dinner in front of the TV for once.

The atmosphere was strange between us. Thane kept us physically connected, snuggling with me on the sofa, kissing my head now and then, caressing my arm. And that night when we went to bed, he took me to his.

My heart was in my throat as he switched off the lights and hauled me back against him. I waited.

“Good night.”

I couldn’t say good night.

I was choking back tears.

Either he didn’t want me anymore or he didn’t trust me to know what I wanted.

Neither felt wonderful.

Wanting nothing more than to cry myself to sleep, I felt suffocated by his arms because his presence meant I had to hold it in, and now that I wasn’t holding anything in, I never wanted to bury my feelings like that again. It was too painful once they exploded. The awful panic attack in the bathroom was proof of that.

Pressing my lips together to stifle the sobs, the tears rolled down my cheeks, hidden in the dark.

So busy concentrating on not making a sound, I didn’t feel Thane tense against me. Seconds later, however, I heard him whisper hoarsely in my ear, “You kill me, mo leannan.”

And then I was turned as if weightless and hauled over Thane’s body as he fell onto his back. My palms landed on his chest and I straddled him in the dark. As my vision adjusted to the shadows, I made him out through the moonlight peeking in around the window blinds.

“Take whatever you need.”

Relief flooded me as he grew hard beneath me. An answering throb pulsed between my legs, and I reached for the hem of my nightdress, pulling it off, followed by my underwear.

Thane reached for my bare hips, his long, strong fingers caressing and squeezing as he undulated gently under me. I lifted off him but only to yank down his pajama bottoms and underwear just far enough to free him.

Then I pushed down onto him, and our gasps filled the room as his thickness filled me.

“So good,” I panted, leaning over to brace my hands on his shoulders.

“Take it,” he grunted, gripping my hips harder now. “Take everything you need.”

Wanting his hands everywhere at once, I opted for moving them from my hips to my breasts. Thane groaned and massaged them, his thumbs plucking at my nipples.

“Yes, yes,” I gasped, riding him slow but deep. When I twisted my hips at a certain angle, he hit me exactly where I needed him. My hands curled into his shoulders for better purchase as I grew more desperate for the exquisite tension building inside me.

“Fuck.” Thane squeezed my breasts harder as his hips flexed under me, his movements constrained by his pajamas and boxers.

It made me hotter. Knowing I could do whatever I wanted to him.

Bending to his powerful chest, I licked at his nipples and then sucked before I bit him gently.

His hips bucked under me and then he sat up, changing the angle of my drives, roughly pulling my hair back so he could clamp his mouth over my breast. The relief of him playing with me as he always had excited me more than anything. We hadn’t changed.

He wouldn’t let us change.

My fingers scraped through his hair as his mouth tormented me, and my hips picked up pace. Thane released me to lift his head to mine, and we stared into each other’s eyes as I rode him. We held gazes, his hot and desire filled, tender, and mine the mirror image.

My fingernails bit into his back as I increased my pace, the pleasure building higher, higher, our breaths mingling as we panted against each other’s mouths.

And then that tightening coil inside me snapped, and I arched my neck, crying out my release, Thane’s lips pressing against my throat seconds before he groaned in climax.

I shook, trembling as the orgasm melted through my limbs. As I throbbed around Thane’s pulses, he kissed me. Deep, possessive, wet kisses that fired my blood.

“Again,” I said against his mouth.

He grinned. “I’m not twenty anymore, mo leannan. You’ll need to give me ten minutes.”

I shoved him none too gently back on the bed and slipped off with a little gasp that made him grunt. Then I shifted down his body, pulling his pajamas and boxers all the way off. And I kissed my way back up.

Thane laughed softly in the dark. But his amusement died when my kisses reached his inner thigh. I teased and tormented him until he was begging for my mouth where he wanted it most. And before I gave it to him, I smirked. “That was less than ten minutes.”

He gave a bark of laughter that cut off with an abrupt “Jesus!” as I took him deep into my mouth.

We made love until light streamed into the room through the blinds and then finally, exhausted, we collapsed in each other’s arms. As sleep drifted over me, I smiled, our shouts of pleasure still ringing in my ears. It was like I’d marked him tonight. Made him mine in a way he could never be anyone else’s.

While he had given me exactly what I needed—the reminder that what Austin did to me and what I’d unintentionally done to myself could never taint the connection I had with Thane Adair.

And just maybe … maybe we wouldn’t turn out to be temporary after all.

The next morning when I woke up, the first face I saw wasn’t Thane’s; he was behind me, cuddling me in his sleep. No, the first face I saw was Francine Adair’s, grinning from Thane’s lap in the photo on his nightstand.

Just like that, the hopes I’d gone to sleep with—while early-morning dusk and the musky scent of sex-exhausted bodies clouded my reality—deflated.